It's six weeks today since my bilateral mastectomy. On one hand, it feels like it went by so fast. On the other, I can't believe I am still dealing with this.
Lots of good news - I had an excellent time with my friends in Florida, and felt, for the first time, normal. I felt like a normal person all the time. Not who I was before - I will never be who I was before - but like me. Good enough. I walked - not ran - the 5k, and it was super fun. I felt great about it.
I have been feeling good in general, so I started back to work this week. I learned I do not know the meaning of "ease in". Nope, it was all or nothing apparently. In some ways, it feels like I never left.
Also in good news this week, a huge team of oncologists discussed my case and determined the risks I would incur from chemotherapy would outweigh the possible benefits. This is a relief to me, because I don't want to suffer. Not going to lie - I really, really did not want to go through that. There were a few options, some being more attractive than others - cocktails of drugs, other surgeries, etc. The option they picked for me and that I agreed to try was to take an estrogen blocking drug. They would like me to do this for years. 5 years, probably 10, maybe 15. We will see how it goes for a month. Let me make this clear - I am not refusing medical care or going against advice. I'm simply following the usual protocol, which is to take it for a month and evaluate.
In bad news, I have spent the last day or so in pain from an ongoing procedure that comes with the reconstruction. It's so uncomfortable I am actually wishing I could take narcotics. This, from the woman who refuses Advil for headaches and used Tylenol after her double mastectomy.
A friend recently commented on my version of manageable versus what she thought of as manageable. It made me smile - I did think a double mastectomy and months of reconstruction was reasonable. Now I know it's huge. I would not change my decision, I am very happy with it. But it's still huge. Even though this is early stage, "easy" cancer, it still sucks. I wish I had a more eloquent and elegant way of phrasing that, but I don't. Cancer sucks. Some go through more than others, but it all sucks.
I hope that not one other person ever feels the need to quantify or qualify their experience with this, or any other disease. I catch myself doing that all the time. Yet I am encouraged to do so by people who like to remind me how much worse it could be. I know how much worse it could be. I saw it up close.
When I got the news about not needing chemo, I was at first happy and then deeply sad. For 18 years, I have been a bearer of bad news about cancer. My mom's initial diagnosis, her second diagnosis, her problems with reconstruction, her stage 4 diagnosis. All the scans for the 8 years after that. We had very very few moments of good news about cancer. I made a lot of phone calls that ended with tears. And here I had good news, and I didn't know how to tell it. I was happy but it was a loaded happy. It was a little joy with a whole lot of sadness.
I wish this was news my mom would have gotten. Or my aunt. Or anyone else with stage 4 cancer that I have known and loved. So many women and men who do not have it easy, and so many who should never be told they do.
Let's just take this good news, be grateful for it, and hold in our hearts all the people we have known and loved who got different news. May they be at peace. May you be at peace in your heart. May the world one day be at peace.
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